Save your pennies. Trust me.

Babies can be expensive. Before the baby arrived, and shortly after, we spent money on things that in honesty turned out to be utterly crap. With maternity leave pay starting to financially stitch us up, there a few regrets in terms of spending…

Clothes

You need to clothe your baby – obviously I know that, but my god do they grow quickly. Our most valuable items of clothing were the £5 white baby grows from Tesco – top little purchase. All of the clothes we bought randomly before the baby was born were instantly rendered useless when we found out he was going to be 9lb+. On top of that, we didn’t account for how generous people were going to be with gifts. We got so many different outfits and of course we wanted to use them as people had spent time and money on them for us. So, one of my money saving tips is hold off on the outfits until the baby gets here – no matter how hard that might be!

Placenta pills

I was dubious when my wife mentioned eating one of her own organs. It’s apparently it’s a natural thing that most mammals do, but it’s still weird. The claimed health benefits of eating your placenta are numerous, but after spending a fair wad on getting Elissa’s (“good sized”) placenta encapsulated, I’m not convinced it was worth the money. In fact, I know it isn’t because it is still in the cupboard. Before the birth, any claim of help with PND or vitamin deficiencies sounds like a great idea…in reality, I’m not sure my wife’s dried out placenta did much good at all. We ran into a few complications a couple of weeks after her emergency C-section and both the encapsulator and the doctors suggested Lis stopped taking the placenta pills…

Decorating

Our nursery is mint. I literally love it. Decorating it took us ages…the only issue is I think we will move before the baby actually sleeps in it. So really, it’s just a really well decorated baby changing room! We don’t have a very big house and we are quickly out growing it. With Eddi, we plan to have him in our room for the next few months and soon after I hope we will get a new place. In our haste to prepare (circa 20 weeks pregnant) we decked out the nursery. Not the best shout. What gets me more is that I spent about 5 days painting the walls and skirting boards. Goaded on by my wonderful wife, I made a great job of decorating. Of course now we have a baby, the buggy has carved away my hours of toil, with black marks on every wall (sick or urine on the others) I look back and think maybe spend money on that paint wasn’t the best shout!

Gimmicks

Yes, we were drawn in by a lot of the “gimmick” products out there. As first time parents we didn’t realise that most baby products are in fact literally useless. They are marketed and sold as wonder products, but in reality, they do little more than clutter up your house and heavily damage your wallet. I found we were weakest at baby shops – what’s that? It’s scientifically proven to help sleep? We NEED it. Damn my naiveness! As it turns out a cuddle is the best tool to help with sleeping but of course the shops won’t tell you that!

In hindsight, we should have been a bit more careful with these little bits – I mean they didn’t break the bank but at the same time every penny counts!